


Languages of Hallownest

by Schnikeys_Discuss (Schnikeys)



Series: Clockie's Meta [21]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Analysis, Archived from radioactivesupersonic Blog, Character Analysis, Gen, Languages and Linguistics, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:00:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27066796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnikeys/pseuds/Schnikeys_Discuss
Summary: "I was thinking about how in Hollow Knight, the characters are tacitly speaking an in-universe language given what we hear for the audio cues, and then I was struck by the idea… they’re probably not all speaking thesamelanguages?"
Series: Clockie's Meta [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974223
Kudos: 5





	Languages of Hallownest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/gifts).



I was thinking about how in Hollow Knight, the characters are tacitly speaking an in-universe language given what we hear for the audio cues, and then I was struck by the idea… they’re probably not all speaking the _same_ languages? Lemm mentions on one of the wanderer’s journal dialogues that there are multiple dialects spoken throughout Hallownest.

And what’s more, Ghost is probably only familiar with some dialects, and not others? For example, parts of Ze’mer / the Grey Mourner’s dialogue is untranslated- you can actually hear her VA saying “Le’mer”. It’s entirely possible the takeaway isn’t that Ze’mer has a weird way of speaking, but rather, that _Ghost doesn’t completely understand her dialect_ \- only most of it, so they’re mis-translating or not translating some things. Alternatively, she may be speaking partially in the kingdom’s dialect, but having a thick accent and using certain untranslateable words from her original kingdom, and Ghost doesn’t know that dialect at all.

We know Ghost doesn’t speak Shroomish without the Spore Shroom charm to act as a translator. It might entirely be that the bees have another language and Vespa just deigned to speak to Ghost in the main kingdom’s dialect because her seeming proximity to the Pale King and White Lady would mean she’d know their language for diplomatic reasons. It might even be that Monomon’s archives aren’t “written weirdly” but endemic of another language that Ghost can barely read, so only a few words are translated while things like “thir”, “o” and “ch” are left as-is.

**Author's Note:**

> Analysis originally found here: <https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/183737469075/i-was-thinking-about-how-in-hollow-knight-the>


End file.
